Socializing SharePoint: A Look at 4 Leading Social Software Integrations

By Chelsi Nakano (@Chelsi) Aug 17, 2011

While SharePoint has been a leader in the document and content sharing category for some time, it has remained admittedly weak on the social media front. A number of companies from the third-party ecosystem are trying fill the gaps between the portal's strong points and shortcomings with infusions of popular functions, and we thought it would be useful to highlight a few of the top dogs:

Jive

Jive Software (news, site) makes no bones about the belief that their Social Business Suite (SBS) — first released as "Clearspace" in 2006 — is the greatest thing to happen to the enterprise since sliced bread. Unsurprisingly, the company and its conveniently re-named platform have found very comfortable seats in the newly branded Social Business show, or what the Jive team likes to call The Consumerprise.

In the last couple of years Jive has become what many say is the leader in social business software, heading up many research reports on social business and collaboration, including this year’s Social CRM Magic Quadrant from Gartner.

With a bull’s eye on the winners’ circle, Jive’s Web Parts enable SharePoint users to tightly integrate the platform, merging workflows completely.

A breakdown of some key features:

SharePoint files are automatically shared with Jive
SharePoint activity is displayed in the Jive environment (new docs, file updates, calendar views, project lists, etc.)
Single sign-on enables users to read and review SharePoint documents from Jive without logging into SharePoint
Content can be pushed from one platform to the other with one click
Users can search across all discussions, documents, and experts from one location

Jive and SharePoint integration

Key to Jive’s SharePoint-y success is certainly the blank-slate approach. The result has been a heavier focus on the engagement side of things rather than on document management, and thus far users are responding well.

“We think the best strategy is to design the platform around engaging people, not documents,” said Tim Zonca, Jive’s director of product marketing. “We wanted to be social from the ground up.”

If a road paved in solid people engagement appeals to you, Jive invites potential users to request an evaluation or watch some demo videos on their official site.

NewsGator

NewsGator’s (news, site) Social Sites amps up communities and collaboration within SharePoint by allowing users to create socially rich profiles from which they can connect and share ideas. Built directly on top of SharePoint, deeper perks include:

Information exchange: Status updates can be more than 140 characters and can include relevant videos, links, business files, and images
Search: Social Sites now integrates with SharePoint Search (pictured below), including Fast Search, through the use of BCS (business connectivity services).
Access: Use business social software clients - including email, mobile, and desktop - for flexible updating and consuming of status updates, comments, and likes
Administer: Administrative social software tools put the control in your hands. Users have the ability to delete inappropriate microblogging updates or comments, etc.

NewsGator released Version 2 of Social Sites 2010 earlier this year, notably adding a video-sharing module. The NewsGator Video Stream allows employees to upload video in any common format, store it in SharePoint, and share it as streaming media with a Silverlight-based player that can be embedded in the NewsGator activity stream.